Empowering dialysis users and caregivers

Kamal Shah

Hello, I'm Kamal from Hyderabad, India. I have been on dialysis for the last 13 years, six of them on PD, the rest on hemo. I have been on daily nocturnal home hemodialysis for the last four and half years. I can do pretty much everything myself.
I love to travel and do short weekend trips or longer trips to places which have dialysis centers. Goa in India is a personal favorite. It is a great holiday destination and has two very good dialysis centers.

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NephroPlus is organising India's first ever Olympic style Games event for dialysis patients! We at NephroPlus firmly believe that dialysis patients can lead normal lives. What better way to prove this that organising such an event?

It is going to be a one day event conducted in Hyderabad. The event is open to all dialysis patients across the country. There are events like 50 and 100 meters sprint, 250 meters walkathon, 500 meters cycling, table tennis, badminton etc. For those not inclined to exert too much, there are events like chess and sudoku!

To make sure patients who stay in other parts of the country who do not want to miss their dialysis, a participation allowance is being given for early registrants that should cover flight tickets as well!

If you want to come and spend a few days in the city of Hyderabad also, you could use the allowance to cover your accommodation! Dialysis can be arranged at a NephroPlus centre at a reasonable price.

So, if you are on dialysis or know someone who is, please register today!

Never before in the history of an Indian election has such a decisive mandate been given by the electorate to any political party. The soon-to-be-installed Arvind Kejriwal Government will have practically no opposition in the Delhi assembly.

Many analysts express deep concern on how a party that tends not to shy away from acts that cause people to describe it as 'anarchist' would behave when there is no opposition. Recent signs however show that Kejriwal and his team have learnt their lessons. They seem to have mellowed down, become more mature and sensible.

How did they manage to get such a huge mandate?

Conspiracy theorists claim that the BJP intentionally lost this election. Well, if it really was so, they would never have unleashed PM Modi during the campaign. Why would they want to tarnish his reputation of winning elections? The truth is that the people really wanted an AAP Government.

Is this is a referendum on the Modi government? I highly doubt this. People these days differentiate between the Centre and the State. Its been under a year since the Modi government took over at the Centre. Its performance, despite the huge expectations has not been bad. I don't think people would swing from a 100% verdict for the BJP to an almost 100% verdict against the BJP in such a short span of time.

Now, coming to the larger issue - of the impact of this election on national politics. Unfortunately, I don't think we are going to see much change in the way politics is run in much of the rest of the country any time soon despite the AAP victory.

The reason for this is that the AAP would first focus completely on Delhi and make sure that the promises it had made, especially with regard to a clean, corruption-free administration are fulfilled. Any attempt to look at other states would take away the focus on this. AAP is a young party with a very poor organisation structure beyond Delhi. It would be foolhardy of them to expect similar successes elsewhere due to this major handicap.

Despite PM Modi's best intentions on the issue of corruption, the BJP is pulled down by the baggage it has carried for all these decades. There are just too many people who are from the 'old-school' who believe in the culture of entitlement that afflicts the traditional political class in this country. And this is why he will fail when it comes to providing an administration that is as clean as one that the AAP can provide.

The First ever Dialysis Olympiad in India organised by NephroPlus was a huge success. Almost 350 patients and their attendants participated in the event this Sunday, the 15th of February in Hyderabad. Right from the morning, patients started participating in the various events that were conducted with great enthusiasm and a 'will to win' which was the theme of the event. Here are some pictures from the event:

As an organisation grows, individuals who have started it have to take on additional responsibilities. As a result, the number of things on your to-do list grows significantly. You often have multiple urgent things that you need to do NOW. You are always picking one over the other saying you will come back to the other. Your list of things left undone grows.

The number of emails you need to attend to also keeps growing tremendously. You are away from your computer for a few hours and by the time you get back to your computer, you find 50-60 emails that have hit your inbox and need to be responded to.

I have this policy of 'Inbox 0'. This means that I always need to have no emails in my Inbox. When an email comes, I need to read it and do one of four things:

- Delete it if it is not needed at all (promotions, alerts etc.)
- Just move it to an appropriate folder if I don't need to do anything about it
- Respond immediately and move it to an appropriate folder
- Add an item to my to-do list and move it to an appropriate folder

This adds stuff to my to-do list and I was looking for a way to optimise how I manage my to-do list which was getting just too long and unmanageable. I use Wunderlist for managing my to-dos (and might I add, evangelised many of my colleagues at work to use this great tool as well - it syncs your to-dos among your phones and computers, has multiple lists and easy prioritising).

Now, now, Vikram, I can see you raising your eyebrows! I am not CEO of a startup, but I am a co-founder of a startup. So, I thought might as well read it as I was looking for ways I could be more productive.

Here is what I have started doing after reading the article. The article recommends other tools but conceptually what I am doing with Wunderlist is the same. It is not rocket science and after reading this, you might say: Much ado about nothing! But then, most great ideas seem simple. The fact is I was not doing it until I read this and after beginning to do this, it has helped a lot!

So, I have an "Inbox" list on Wunderlist. Here is where all new to-dos go to. Every week, on Monday morning, I go through this list and move to-dos to my "This week" list. These are things I would really like to get done this week. Then, every morning, I go through my "This week" list and move to-dos to my "Today" list. Then I take up things from my "Today" list and then actually do them. At the end of the day, it feels really nice to see that most of your to-dos are done.

I have tried this for a couple of weeks. It has worked really well. Yes, it might be early days yet but I am going to persist and continue this. Many things that were pending for a long time have got done. Earlier, all I was doing was responding to email. This meant OTHERS were dictating what I did in my day. With this method, I am dictating what I do with my day! This is really important!

There are many productivity hacks that people use. It is important that you pick something to make sure you get things done which are important to you. Many of us end up doing things that are unimportant to us and just react to emails and things others want us to do. That is not what we are meant to do!